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It has been more than 10 years since the concept of nanotechnology safety (nano-safety) was first proposed and detailed by the Texas State University Nanomaterials Application Center director. The concept of nano-safety has developed in educational efforts that have increased the awareness and competence of graduating students. Much dissemination along multiple paths still needs to be done. This dissemination includes education of incumbent workers as well as students. This article provides a short overview of the need for training in nanosafety followed by a section on the initial efforts to educate students and employees in the safe handling and use of nanomaterials. The challenge that remains is how to address the potential impact of the rapid development of new materials in the field of nanotechnology. Finally, some needed investigations are presented.

The world is beginning a recovery from the global disaster caused by the reaction to the coronavirus known as COVID-19. People are returning to “normal” living and organizations are restarting the day-to-day operations. As the pandemic subsides, how do companies restart without missteps that prolong their recovery? The restarting presents an opportunity to become stronger and more competitive. This article provides thoughts on the means to move forward quickly to reestablish proficiency and regain former capabilities. The organization size and location may define specific issues and solution paths yet are based on a common set of guidelines.

As smart technology becomes a pervasive part of our everyday lives—from what we wear to how we interact with our environment—cities have a big role to play in ensuring that it is applied to the public interest. While an ethical smart city seeks to create public awareness for issues ranging from the value of smart city solutions to privacy, it is critical that an equitable smart city ensures inclusion despite the different capabilities available to individual members of the city. This chapter covers thoughts and ideas on addressing the required inclusivity, the need for a minimum level of universal coverage, the ability to ensure commonality of understanding, and a means of providing a trusted service. Connectivity is a critical feature of the connected Smart City with significant discussions, so this topic is covered in greater detail.

This chapter focuses on the environmental, health, and safety (HSE) aspects of nanotechnology and nanomaterials. The HSE aspect of nanomaterials is gaining more visibility, and organizations will be required to address the needs of both people and the environment. The fact that various nanomaterials are more reactive than their bulk counterparts creates a need to address the possible effects, which are typically unknown, in working with, handling, storing, applying, manufacturing, and creating novel combinations of nanomaterials. This chapter provides an overview of some of the characteristics of known nanomaterials, identifies known effects on people and the environment, and addresses the need and method of proper handling of nanomaterials. There are methods to be implemented to address current and possible future concerns. Education is critical to the proper and safe handling of nanomaterials.

The topic of nanotechnology safety has been the subject of many discussions. Starting in 2006, a focus was started at Texas State University to develop an educational process to train workers and students in the elements of nanotechnology safety. The progress was slow and had many setbacks, which took 8 years to overcome. This chapter presents the path to the creation of and details about the two courses in nanotechnology safety education and the coming nanotechnology safety certification.

This OSHA Susan Harwood Grant addressed nanotechnology safety training for workers and was critical for building a path for future training/education courses. The purposes of the grant were to facilitate training and to assess the outcomes of the participants’ knowledge. Two trainers went to four sites in the United States, including one in Puerto Rico, to conduct eight-hour courses in the Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) implications of nanomaterials A survey was distributed to participants at the end of the course to assess the quality of the course and the instructors. Overwhelmingly, approximately 95% of the participants were satisfied with the quality of the course and instruction. A pretest was given to the participants to assess if they knew anything about EHS, and a posttest was administered after the training course. A hypothesis test was used to determine the effectiveness of the content of the course. A paired samples t-test was used to ascertain whether there was an improvement in scores from the pretest to the posttest. The findings indicated a statistically significant difference between the group mean scores from the pretest to the posttest. In essence, the participants improved from the pretest to the posttest scores as a result of the training. However, there are caution should be taken when addressing the results as the sole indicator of the participants’ success.

This paper describes the development of autonomous electronic micro and nanoscale sensor systems for very harsh downhole oilfield conditions and provides an overview of the operational requirements necessary to survive and make direct measurements of subsurface conditions. One of several significant developmental challenges is selecting appropriate technologies that are simultaneously miniaturize-able, integrate-able, harsh environment capable, and economically viable. The Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC) is employing a platform approach to developing and testing multi-chip, millimeter and micron-scale systems in a package at elevated temperature and pressure in API brine and oil analogs, with the future goal of miniaturized systems that enable the collection of previously unattainable data. The ultimate goal is to develop subsurface nanosensor systems that can be injected into oil and gas well bores, to gather and record data, providing an unparalleled level of direct reservoir characterization. This paper provides a status update on the research efforts and developmental successes at the AEC.

This paper reports on our work developing a set of modular courses to intended to help foster Ethical, Social, Environmental, Health, and Safety Awareness in Tomorrow’s Engineers and Technologists. We focus on emerging technologies, and especially nanotechnology. In the last decade nanotechnology has made myriad inroads into mainstream society. It is merely one of many exciting new ways that science and technology are changing how we live and think. Along with these developments in science and technology come new industries, and new challenges. This requires heightened awareness of health and safety risks, ethical and social considerations, and environmental implications of their work. This need is not limited to nanotechnologies, nor revolutionary technologies, but should be an integral part of all engineering work. Our NSF-funded project is developing and introducing introductory and advanced curricula for online and face-to-face course modules taught as full courses or infused into existing courses. The courses and modules are being developed and piloted with the guidance of an advisory council made up of nanotechnology leaders from academia and industry. One important goal of the project is to recruit, engage, prepare, and encourage students from traditionally underrepresented groups to careers in Science and Engineering, with a focus on Nanotechnology. In this paper we explain the origin of the project and how we developed the course modules, review the first semesters teaching from these modules, and examine our initial results and evaluations.

The paper reports on our work developing a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional approach to teaching Ethical, Social, Safety, Health, and Environmental Issues in Nanotechnology. Under a grant from NSF, we are developing, implementing, and assessing two modular courses that include societal, ethical, environmental, health, and safety issues related to nanotechnology for undergraduates in engineering and engineering technology. It is a collaborative project between Texas State University, a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and the University of Texas at Tyler (UT Tyler), whose student population is 60 percent women. The work is being conducted by a highly interdisciplinary team of faculty who bring to the project expertise from mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, industrial education and technology, physics, biology, philosophy, and ethics. Here we explain the origin of the project, explicate how we have developed the course modules, review the first two semesters (Summer and Fall 2013) teaching from these modules, and examine our initial results and evaluations.

Nanotechnology has been promoted as the “next big thing” that will transform everyday life through the creation of numerous new products and enhanced materials for improved quality of life. Numerous applications that incorporate lighter-weight but stronger materials have been in such everyday products as golf clubs and structural elements. Medical applications of nanotechnology promise to yield medical solutions that provide for improved disease control and improved biocompatible materials. However, there is a need to consider the potential risk of using materials where their potential impact on both people and the environment may be unknown. As with working with any unknowns, a risk assessment needs to be employed. This chapter provides basic considerations for risk management, an overview of regulations that can impact nanotechnology efforts, and a short list of various Website references that are pertinent to the overall subject of nanotechnology risk efforts.

This paper describes the challenges of nano-scale sensor development for very harsh downhole oilfield conditions and provides an overview of the operational requirements necessary to survive and directly measure the desired subsurface data. One of the significant challenges is maintaining sensor accuracy and sensitivity as devices are miniaturized into the micron scale and below. The goal is to develop subsurface nanosensors that can be injected into oil and gas well bores to gather and report data, providing an unparalleled level of reservoir characterization.

Nanotechnology is a broad, emerging area of technology development that cuts across nearly every sector of the economy and is gaining ground in the marketplace. During the last ten years, health safety personnel have been studying the effects of nanoparticles on human health. As nanotechnology gains momentum on the global market, there are some safety issues that must be explored and resolved before assuring a safe working environment. Workers need to be trained in sustainable and safe manufacturing practices. To have the greatest impact, safety training should be incorporated into two-year post-secondary and workforce education programs so that graduates enter the workforce with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to maintain a safe workplace from the outset of their careers. A number of professional organizations such as CDC, NIOSH, and ICON have begun collaboration efforts to establish a foundation to help define the fundamentals of nano-EHS safety content.

Mask cleaning has been a significant challenge. Advanced PhotoMasks have proven to be even more difficult. The experimental work on 157nm systems uncovered an issue of particle growth under the pellicle. Since the mask blank had a different composition from existing production mask blanks, there was not a concern about current production impact. Investigations were started after a few incidents occurred on 193nm masks. The investigations demonstrated that the masks have a consistent family of contaminants that are on all chrome absorber masks. The initial work provided clues to the nature of the particle growth and some indication of the potential sources. The issues seemed to evolve from the total system and not a single contaminant source. Currently, hard defects due to particle growth under the pellicle occur industry wide. This paper will provide the methodology employed for a recent cleaning evaluation and identify some of the culprits that cause particle growth. The issue has grown to a major problem and needs to be quickly addressed.

Chrome-based absorbers have been the mainstay of the photomask industry for three decades. While chrome is attractive because of its durability and opacity, it conversely poses challenges for etch and repair. Due to large capital investments, any new absorber must be designed to work with existing scanners, mask writers, and mask inspection tools. Furthermore changing absorber materials may not improve defect control in mask blank fabrication, which is a paramount concern in blank fabrication. Consequently, blank manufacturers are reluctant to change from chrome. In terms of return on investment (ROI), the only driver to switch technologies is achieving higher mask and wafer yields. This is a reasonable assumption as both etch and repair tool suppliers believe a non-chrome material like tantalum (Ta) compounds would significantly improve their capabilities with known technologies. A high level estimate shows that with even aggressive improvement assumptions, a 100% conversion from chrome does not save money. Based on the current International SEMATECH (ISMT) cost of ownership (COO) model and improved yields for critical dimension (CD) and defects, a case can be made for converting at and below 100 nm ground rules. An industry wide conversion from chrome to a non-chrome absorber is estimated to cost $100M. By contrast, blank suppliers are reportedly spending "multiple" millions of dollars to improve chrome per year. A widespread concern is whether binary optical masks have enough life left to provide sufficient ROI. Optical lithography will continue to be of use in the foreseeable future. Even as leading-edge production moves to new technology, the main manufacturing volumes will continue to create significant demand for masks for 100 nm to 45 nm for many years. With the industry currently pushing extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), the best situation would be for EUVL and optical lithography to choose the same absorber material. This creates a winning situation for the industry independent of EUVL implementation timing. Today Ta-based films are a reasonable choice.